Architect born for challenge of reinventing twin towers

"A hundred times have I thought New York a catastrophe ... a beautiful catastrophe." Those were the words of the great architect Le Corbusier, awestruck by the Manhattan skyline long before the World Trade Centre's twin towers soared 411 metres (1,350ft) above Wall Street.

Sure, individual buildings were less than perfect, yet it would be a dull spirit which failed to empathise with the collective human pride, longing and folly that sent steel-framed architecture rocketing skywards.

Now that it is no more than a memory, it has fallen to Daniel Libeskind to remember the beautiful catastrophe that was Minoru Yamasaki's World Trade Centre and those who died when its towers collapsed. This is, through horrid circumstance, the job he was born to do: Libeskind is the architect of memory par excellence.

He made his name with the sensational Jewish Museum in Berlin, a broken Star of David, a three-dimensional bolt of architectural lightning, part monument part gallery, realised in stunning modern materials. At the heart of the museum a concrete void evokes the loss of Berlin's Jews.

Born in Lodz, Poland, in 1946, Libeskind did not really expected to build at all, much less to win, as he did yesterday, the world's most significant architectural commission.

Libeskind became a US citizen in 1965. He studied music in Israel and New York before turning to architecture. In 1989 he moved to Berlin, although New York may now beckon.

His main recent works include the Imperial War Museum North, in Manchester, and designs at various stages of development for the Spiral gallery at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.